Friday, May 21, 2010

Robert here, scouring the internet to give you the latest on the films premiering in Cannes.

In Competition

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (no I don't know how it's pronounced) directs this film about a dying man who's visited by the ghosts of his wife and son, in non-human form. Could we have a late competitor for the Palme? The AV Club calls it the directors's "strangest and most mysterious picture yet," and means so in a good way. "It is a mysterious, haunting, and breathtakingly beautiful film," comes from The House Next Door. A film that's good though otherworldy and bizarre may appeal to Burton and his jury. But it's not all praise. Guy Lodge at In Contention says the film is "a wispy lark with no emotional payoff."

Fair Game Director Doug Liman (Jumper, yeah really) directs this film about that whole Valerie Plame affair a few years back. Reviews are so so. Xan Brooks of The Guardian is unsold on it. IndieWIRE considers its "unsentimental tone that only occasionally moves beyond the level of a solid made-for-TV routine." And The AV Club laments that once the film gets into politics "fast-paced Beltway machinations are replaced by lofty speeches in which we’re exhorted to “demand that truth!”

Our Life Dante Luchetti, best known for directing the film My Brother is an Only Child, returns with this film about a normal Roman whose life is turned upside down. Lee Marshall of Screen Daily notes "Our Life has its heart in the right place. But it feels like an episode of a tough, cutting-edge TV drama." And over at The House Next Door, the complaint seems to be "It's incredibly bizarre, and from a dramatic standpoint makes absolutely no sense."

4 comments:

For some reason I connect Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives with A Hundred Years of Solitude even if I realize one author is Thai and the other is Colombian - but that's what came to mind reading about it.

I'm tickled that the three reviews you quote for Uncle Boonmee are mine, Matt Noller's and Mike D'Angelo's -- since the three of us are sharing an apartment, those reviews were all written pretty much simultaneously in the same room. Just find that amusing.